The Big Ten unveiled the complete conference schedule for the 2014-15 basketball season, so we can now take a look at Michigan's season in full. It is as follows (almost all game times and broadcast information are TBA):

The single-plays work out relatively well for the Wolverines; the tougher opponents have to come to Ann Arbor, while two of the three worst teams in the conference last year—Penn State and Purdue—comprise half of Michigan's single-play road games. All four teams Michigan will host in single-plays have very tough home environments, as well; even after last year's win, nobody's going to mind not having to go to the Kohl Center.

While Michigan must play two favorites for the conference title twice—MSU and OSU, and I don't think anyone is complaining about getting as many of those matchups as possible—they get very winnable home-and-homes against Northwestern and Rutgers. The Wolverines also get to ease into the conference slate; the January schedule, especially early, isn't too hard, then the difficulty really turns up early in February. For a young team, that's probably ideal.

[Hit THE JUMP for the new B1G Tournament bracket and one reader's in-person impressions from Michigan's third game of their tour of Italy.]

Perverse incentives create perverse results. It is of course completely nuts for Michigan to play Florida in Dallas. The stadium is smaller, the fanbases are far away, and the pageantry of college football is largely replaced with sterile NFL lawyer spaceship accoutrements. But people do it because they get the money.

After Wisconsin scheduled LSU in a goofy neutral-and-neutral situation, Jim Delany issued a memo that the Cedar Times Gazette has unearthed:

Delany’s letter, which was obtained by The Gazette, highlighted the league’s support for neutral sites provided at least half of the series occur within the Big Ten footprint and under the league’s television agreements. Delany wrote an arrangement would be “disapproved” if a Big Ten game was not designated as the home squad in at least half the games or if it was a one-game event that took place outside the league’s television umbrella. …

“We applaud and very much appreciate your efforts in doing so, as this should create value for your teams and fans as well as for our television partners and, therefore, for all Conference members. But please keep in mind the above policies that are important to all of us as we share collectively in the revenue generated by our televised games."

I'm not sure what "disapproved" means here. Could be "we will not let you do this"; could be "we will raise our mighty eyebrow at you but take no other action."

In any case the memo indirectly indicates why neutral site games are popular: the two teams participating can split the TV money between themselves instead of between themselves and Indiana and Purdue and a bunch of other teams that are not in fact playing. When there's a Jerryworld game, ESPN and Jerryworld get the rights and then give home-team-sized slices to both participants. The Big Ten doesn't like that.

The Big Ten can pound sand. Scheduling real games would be so much easier if the teams in them actually saw the benefits without having to leave campus. There is zero reason that a Michigan-Florida home and home should be less lucrative than a neutral site game for the people involved.

Thankfully it sounds like Michigan's trip to Jerryworld in 2017 will be their last, by league decree. It's for the wrong reason, but these days that's all you can hope for.

That's not an adjective. The Hoosiers are not seeming particularly cusp this morn.

Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz: Developmental

Neither is this unless it's followed by "-ly disabled," but I like that Ferentz managed to be even more boring than boring. He's probably in a band called White Toast and that's one of their songs.

Maryland’s Randy Edsall: Hungry

Boring, and not in a fun Ferentz way. Boring in a boring way. Randy Edsall is in a band and their one song is "this is not a band it is just a boring man telling you to eat your vegetables."

Michigan’s Brady Hoke: Together

…now that our first round left tackle is gone

Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio: Committed

…pass interference and still weren't found out

Minnesota’s Jerry Kill: Hungry

This would be boring except for this video of Jerry Kill eating a tiny burrito:

Awwww.

Nebraska’s Bo Pelini: Exciting

Accurate. Nebraska is not great but they are a cat explosion waiting to happen.

Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald: Focused

…until the fourth quarter.

Ohio State’s Urban Meyer: Fast

Accurate, in fact tells you something about desired composition of team, relatively un-boring.

Penn State’s James Franklin: Perseverance

Again with the non-adjectives.

Purdue’s Darrell Hazell: Hungry

Would be boring but in this case I think Darrell Hazell may be saying that his players are literally hungry because they can't figure out which hole to put the food in. "NOT THAT ONE," Darrell Hazell screams for the third time today, "THAT ONE ISN'T EVEN A PART OF YOUR BODY."

Rutgers’ Kyle Flood: Hungry

wait why is this guy even listed

Wisconsin’s Gary Andersen: Youthful

Well… yeah. Joe Namath ain't walking through that door.

Meanwhile, Spurrier said "decent" because hail Spurrier. Mark Richt said "wow" for some reason. I ain't saying that Dave Brandon goes around wearing Mark Richt's skin. But I ain't saying otherwise, neither.

"The evidence for making decisions is on the film," Hoke said Saturday night after the team's public scrimmage. "It's evidence-based. Based on film."

No word on the moisture status of his upper lip.

Another "students are gone" article. This one from USA Today is standard-issue. It never ceases to amaze that athletic directors can say this…

"I don't think it's a targeted demographic problem; I think it's more of a (high-definition) TV, living room, leather couch problem and we have to give the people a reason to come to our live product," Washington athletics director Scott Woodward said. "It is something we're going to have to address and deal with."

…and then marvel at the fact that it's tough to sell tickets that have spiraled upward relative to inflation, nearly tripling since 2000. Surely there is an athletic director out there who can figure out why they might be having attendance problems. Take 2, and then take this other 2, and somehow we have to reach 4.

The article has another pile of lukewarm solutions that aren't going to fix much of anything. One thing that could help: stop treating students like enemies. Michigan gets the vapors when a student says the word "sucks" and tries to drown it out; the ushers in the student section are constantly harassing anyone who does anything that looks even slightly like liability. You've got a choice here: loosen things up and accept the fact that you're going to have slightly higher insurance premiums, or continue to turn off your future customers with adversarial relationships between students and your main point of contact with them.

At the link LSA Superstarbroke down every rep from the above, though the times seem off. I don't know why De'Veon Smith wasn't in them at all. There's one where Ross is going against Samuelson with Ty Isaac the RB, and…

REP 15 @ 1:43

O: D. Samuelson (OL) D: J. Ross III (LB) T: T. Isaac (RB)

Ross pops into Samuelson, who is slow to react. Ross is in control but HOLY SHIT Isaac squares and totally buries Ross with a shoulder shiver. Isaac is running with extreme power here - Ross didn't have a chance.

That happens at 1:16 actually. Takeaways from a single drill that the offense is supposed to win: Samuelson is still a ways away from figuring (that's totally expected), Ross is what he is (smart, great at anticipating, still smallish), and whoa Ty Isaac; I'm not 100% sure the outcome would have been different if you replaced Ross with Pipkins there.

Guessing we'll be doing a lot of RB rating this season as Michigan tries to settle on which of the four backs is more effective. [Fuller]

FYI yes it's Isaac; Smith wears #4 and for some reason that could be "don't injure the starter" he doesn't appear in the drill. By the way his nickname is "Honey Badger" now.

Speaking of rating rushers. Hero of the diaries MCalibur graced us with 2,800 words to create a metric for rating rushers—RBs/QBs/FBs/etc.—by mixing the touchdown rate and fumble rate with adjusted yards per attempt. I was particularly impressed by how he elegantly challenged the longstanding arbitrary assumption that 20 yards was a "big" play by showing the standard deviation on runs is 7.5 and the average run is about 4 yards, so a "big" play can be defined as one that goes beyond the standard deviation, i.e. 12 yards or more should be the standard for a breakaway run.

The result is something like a passer rating for RBs, and a chart with the contributing factors broken out. Unfortunately scheme and opponent and skill around the player etc. have a major influence: Toussaint's 68% went-forward rate is probably 15% his fault. Ameer Abdullah's fumble rate and low TD rate appeared to damage him, but how much of that is on Nebraska being so bend-don't-break and then trying to Abdullah their way across the 50 yard line before letting Tommy pass?

So it's not ready to enter the pantheon of stats yet, but it's still a remarkable example of what people will accomplish when you give them free stats to work with.

Speaking of tons of fascinating and useful data, for free… MCalibur mentioned cfbstats as his resource but I'm guessing he downloaded his data awhile ago, since going there now just sends you to data hoarding company Marty now works for.

The good news is last time I mentioned that in this space a reader offered to help us scrub NCAA data and reproduce that, and Mathlete jumped on the project, and there's now a very long email chain that I'm CC'ed on but has gotten way beyond my comprehension that should sometime in the coming months result in a comprehensive stats page on this site, with all of our base data available to download for free. Finally there will be a place you can go on the internet to get free, sane football stats (other than FO) that treat sacks as passing plays and tempo as something that exists. It also converts "ATH"s to positions, and will classify an Arizona "SB" as a running back and a Northwestern "SB" as a tight end. That place will be here. #ilovemyreaders!

So we tried doing this big draftageddon thing to be all informative. Some people liked it; other people said they only care about their own fantasy teams. Fine. I get it. Some people like to read an average novel's worth of bloggers infighting over Rutgers offensive linemen, and some people prefer to use their football knowledge to make money for themselves.

To everyone but the 9 of you who voted for my Draftageddon team, if you think you can beat me, then I implore you: beat me. See that team above? That is my team for Week 1 of our fantasy partner Draft King's, now-totally-accepting-entries, college football contest, or "CFB $10K REDSHIRT" game as it's apparently named.

/offers to be official naming things guy.

/changes that to Executive Vice President of Titling Operations

My team. Yes, I took all Big Ten players except tight end because I feel like I've watched so much O.J. Howard while scouting Nussmeier's offense that he might as well be one of us. Can you do better? No. You can't. I'm so sure of it in fact that if you beat me I'll give you $5 off the MGoStore.

Over two hours! Taped before the Braxton Miller injury, so no discussion of that.

THE OTHER OTHER FOOTBALL [Eric Upchurch]

OFFENSE

We like Devin. We like the wide receiver corps a lot. We talk about the tailbacks, and the tight ends, and then we're done.

Oh right, that. That offensive line type substance.

Nussmeier changes: how extensive? If you can't run will you keep banging your head against the wall? Have we told you about the various weapons Gardner has?

DEFENSE

Depth, there is a ton of it. Brennen Beyer and the impetus of the move to the over. Frank Clark's surge: carrying over? Willie Henry comin'. Joe Bolden and the Eating of the Lemon. Robin Williams's incredible beard game.

Jarrod Wilson and the mysterious absence midseason. And the one spot with much question behind it. Wither Dymonte? The MSU-ification of Big Ten defenses.

Aggression! Aggression! Aggression!

SPECIAL TEAMS

They're extant. Bankin' on Norfleet, and if not, Peppers.

LOLND

We bring in Senior Notre Dame Sarcasm Correspondent BISB to talk about their personnel losses and Michigan's prospects in that game. Also to point and laugh. Jamie will return when we have Big Ten to talk about (and haven't already filled two hours).